Musical Tribute to Anne Frank
In 1943, while in hiding in Amsterdam with her family, Anne
Frank worried and grieved over the fate of her friend Lies Goosens, who had been
transported to a German concentration camp.
"Oh God, why should I have all I could with for, and why should
she be seized by such a terrible fate?" Anne wrote in her diary. "I am not more
virtuous than she... Why should I be chosen to live and she to die? ... Oh God,
protect Lies..."
This portion of the diary is the basis of a work for soprano and
orchestra by composer Oskar Morawetz. On April 14, From the Diary of Anne
Frank received its United States premiere at Carnegie Hall by the Toronto
Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Karl Ancerl, with Lois Marshall as
soloist.
Morawetz's setting is dark, passionate, intense. Contemporary in
rhythm and harmonies, it is dissonant, heavy on percussion, and unmelodic. The
full powers of the orchestra are evoked to convey the anguish of the girl.
If there is a loss in translating the diary into this medium, it
is in the overpowering of the simplicity, purity and youthful directness of Anne
Frank's young voice.
In the last month of Anne's life, she and Lies met again - in
Auschwitz, over a barbed-wire fence. Lies, who survived the death camp, recalls:
"We cried and cried, for now there was only the barbed wire between us, nothing
more. And no longer any difference in our fate."
Anne died in Auschwitz in 1945, only seven weeks before World
War II ended. She was not yet 16.
